NLR Update: June/July 2009
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| Message from the CEO | ||
The last several months at NLR have been very busy, with a number of significant accomplishments and further opportunities in the pipeline. NLR's poised to take another, big leap in its evolution as the strategic network resource for advanced research and innovation. At the mid point of NLR's fiscal year, I wanted to provide you with a quick update on our activities. The upgrade to NLR's infrastructure is complete, with NLR's northern route now having a total capacity of 1600 Gbps. And we've seen a spike in demand for NLR circuits of various kinds, not just from long-time NLR participants, but also from new user groups. In the next month alone we have 24 new, 10-Gigabit Ethernet circuits being deployed across the NLR footprint. We're seeing increasing interest from healthcare provider organizations, for instance, and other community-based groups outside of academia in using NLR as a platform for new applications and remote collaboration. The Iowa Health System, for instance, peers with NLR at the Starlight facility on Northwestern University's Chicago campus so that its hospitals and clinics in over 70 communities in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska can securely and reliably connect with data and specialists elsewhere in the U.S. and also in other countries. NLR's business alliance with Darkstrand is opening up new doors for research groups to work together with private enterprise on taking ideas from the lab to the marketplace. In the last couple of months Darkstrand has entered into collaborative agreements with several leading research institutions to offer corporations the deep technology and discipline expertise at these research groups to help speed commercialization. And NLR's joining with other education and non-education entities, such as the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, in taking an active role in the discussions on a national broadband plan as called for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As NLR prepares to transition to new leadership, it's very gratifying to see NLR embarking on a new era of growth and development, with a continued focus and passion for serving the evolving needs of the research and education community. |
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| A Word from NLR’s New Chair | ||
I'm very honored to have been selected to serve as the new chairman of NLR's Board of Directors. Being appointed by peers I regard so highly to replace Erv Blythe, VP, Information Technology, Virginia Tech, who stepped down as Board chair to lead a strategic initiative at his institution, is a tremendous distinction, and I will do my very best to help ensure that NLR thrives in the years ahead. I'm excited about a number of new opportunities in front of NLR. For instance, NLR is extremely well positioned to serve as the genesis of the national broadband infrastructure called for under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). Because of NLR's national footprint and highly adaptive, multi-service platform, a single infusion of federal dollars into the network fabric could provide the U.S. with an affordable and efficient mechanism for enabling broadband access across the country for a myriad of constituencies and programs ranging from public safety to rural health to economic development. Another potential new opportunity for NLR is becoming more globally competitive in telecommunications, down to institutions and individual users. NLR is such as valuable asset for the U.S. research and education community, given the vast reach of NLR's platform and the depth of NLR's technical expertise. I'd like us to explore how we can leverage this asset even more fully. With regard to the CEO search underway, the NLR Board has been very pleased by the enthusiasm and interest this effort has received from our community. A number of candidates are being considered to lead the network forward for the next five to ten years. The Board is being very deliberate in the process to ensure we get the right candidate for this unique organization. And in the meantime, we're very grateful to Tom West who continues to steer the NLR ship so aptly and with such passion. I look forward to achieving great things - together with NLR's members and participants! Release announcing Kurt's appointment as NLR Chair: http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=43 Kurt's bio: http://www.nlr.net/docs/KurtSnodgrass_Chair_NLR.pdf |
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| NLR in Action | ||
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Spotlight Education: Bringing Top Scientists into the Classroom |
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The Direct-to-Discovery program, developed through a collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Barrow County Schools District northeast of Atlanta, brings leading scientists directly into the classroom, using the NLR network platform and high-definition video conferencing. "Our plan is to fully globalize our curriculum offerings beginning with science and math. Our students routinely work with top scientists not only from Georgia's Tier-1 research universities but also from across the country and soon around the world, thanks to National LambdaRail's high-speed, national network backbone," according to Ed Morrison, Director, Information Technology, Barrow County Schools. "Direct-to-Discovery is designed to work in close partnership with the classroom teachers, to let kids experience science first hand, feel like they're participating in the experiments and engage them in conversations about science and discovery," said Warren Matthews, Research Scientist, Georgia Institute of Technology. As a result of the highly successful experience in Barrow County, Direct-to-Discovery is now in the process of expanding to districts throughout Georgia. Barrow County students have been able to interact with Georgia Tech nanotechnology researchers in a clean room, with a scanning electron microscope (see photo), and soon will use a supercomputer to model data generated from analyzing traffic on the main local artery and then present their results to the county council as part of the district's economic development plan. Educators in other countries have expressed an interest in possibly adopting the program, including in Australia and in several European countries. In July, Georgia Tech and Barrow County Schools will be conducting a live demonstration of Direct-to-Discovery, which will travel over the NLR infrastructure, at QUESTnet, Australia's research and education network conference. Additional information on Direct-to-Discovery: http://www.directtodiscovery.org/. |
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Spotlight High-Performance Computing: How Fast is Your Cloud? |
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The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), which uses NLR as the backbone for its testbed network, has developed and published the first benchmark for measuring the computing power of data-intensive clouds. The new benchmark, called MalStone, provides a much-needed means of understanding how different types of wide-area network (WAN) clouds perform at a time when organizations of all stripes are considering using clouds for their storage and computing needs. Repeated tests with different implementations of MalStone confirm that the open-source cloud architecture Sector computes large data sets significantly faster than Hadoop framework-based clouds used, among others, by Facebook, Google and Yahoo in their cloud offerings. Organizations interested in taking advantage of clouds now have another option to consider in the world of open-source clouds and a new means to measure the performance across large-data clouds. "With MalStone, we've taken the first steps towards creating a useful benchmark for data-intensive computing using clouds, and we look forward to working with the broader community to refine the benchmark," said Robert Grossman, Chair of the OCC and Director of the National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The OCC is uniquely positioned to help drive standards for high-performance WAN clouds, as its testbed network for cloud computing is the world's only cloud based on 10-Gbps circuits. OCC traffic runs over NLR between San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, DC. Open Cloud Consortium: http://www.opencloudconsortium.org/ Open Cloud Testbed: http://www.opencloudconsortium.org/opencloud-09-v6.jpg MalStone Code: code.google.com/p/malgen Background on MalStone: http://blog.rgrossman.com/ (see May 25 post) |
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Spotlight Research: Linking People, Institutions Across the Northern Hemisphere |
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Scientists, educators and students in the U.S. are now exchanging unprecedented volumes of data and communicating via quality audio- and video-conferencing with counterparts in Russia, China, Korea, Canada, the Netherlands and the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - thanks to GLORIAD, the fiber-optic ring of 10-Gbps networks around the northern hemisphere. In a single 24-hour period it's not uncommon for GLORIAD's Chicago router to handle 330,000 significant network flows totaling 2.8 terabytes of network traffic. With NLR peering with GLORIAD in Chicago, U.S. institutions are actively collaborating, often on a daily basis, on significant issues of shared interest to the global community, such as atmospheric research, climate change, nuclear materials protection, seismic monitoring and tele-medical applications. Examples of research collaboration made possible through the joint efforts of GLORIAD and NLR include:
"NLR is an indispensable partner for GLORIAD, with NLR often handling the bulk of GLORIAD traffic between the U.S. and China, Korea, Russia and other participating countries," said Greg Cole, Principal Investigator, U.S. GLORIAD. "NLR enables us to ensure scientists depending on GLORIAD get the network performance and reliability they need." For additional information on GLORIAD: www.gloriad.org. |
| Coming Up |
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July 8 QUESTnet Conference, Gold Coast, Australia.
July 19-22 Joint Techs Conference, Indianapolis.
Nov 4 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, Denver.
Nov 14-20 Supercomputing 09, Portland. |
| NLR News Highlights: January – June 2009 |
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NLR Offers Leading-Edge Infrastructure for America's Network
NLR Selected for Large Hadron Collider Network
Kurt Snodgrass Appointed NLR Board Chair
NLR Rolls Out Multi-point TelePresence
NLR Supercharges its Infrastructure
NLR Hosts First International TelePresence Session NLR, Partners Propose Broadband Innovation Strategy March 5, 2009
NLR, Members Enable Digital Media Delivery |
| NLR Platform-at-a-Glance |
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Up to 1600 Gbps capacity 12,000 miles coast-to-coast Nodes in 30 cities Easy connectivity to over 30 regional networks Approx. 200 universities participating Platform for NASA, DOE labs Infrastructure for major NSF research grants: GENI, OptIPuter, TeraGrid Owned by the U.S. research and education community |
| Contact Us |
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We hope you have enjoyed reading this NLR Update. We welcome your questions and feedback.
Contact us at editor@nlr.net. |
National LambdaRail (NLR)
P.O. Box 1610, Cypress, CA 90630
www.nlr.net